CHAPTER VIII

THE LOVERS OF ORELAY

I had come a thousand miles--rather more, nearly fifteen hundred--in

the hope of picking up the thread of a love story that had got

entangled some years before and had been broken off abruptly. A

strange misadventure our love story had been; for Doris had given a

great deal of herself while denying me much, so much that at last, in

despair, I fled from a one-sided love affair; too one-sided to be

borne any longer, at least by me. And it was difficult to fly from her

pretty, inveigling face, delightful and winsome as the faces one finds

on the panels of the early German masters. One may look for her face

and find it on an oak panel in the Frankfort Gallery, painted in pale

tints, the cheeks faintly touched with carmine. In the background of

these pictures there are all sorts of curious things; very often a

gold bower with roses clambering up everywhere. Who was that master

who painted cunning virgins in rose bowers? The master of Cologne, was

it not? I have forgotten. No matter. Doris's hair was darker than the

hair of those virgins, a rich gold hair, a mane of hair growing as

luxuriously as the meadows in June. And the golden note was continued

everywhere, in the eyebrows, in the pupils of the eyes, in the

freckles along her little nose so firmly and beautifully modelled

about the nostrils; never was there a more lovely or affectionate

mouth, weak and beautiful as a flower; and the long hands were curved

like lilies.

There is her portrait, dear reader, prettily and truthfully and

faithfully painted by me, the portrait of a girl I left one afternoon

in London more than seventeen years ago, and whom I had lost sight of,

I feared for ever. Thought of her? Yes, I thought of her occasionally.

Time went by, and I wondered if she were married. What her husband was

like, and why I never wrote. It were surely unkind not to write....

Reader, you know those little regrets. Perhaps life would be all on

the flat without regret. Regret is like a mountaintop from which we

survey our dead life, a mountaintop on which we pause and ponder, and

very often looking into the twilight we ask ourselves whether it would

be well to send a letter or some token. Now we had agreed upon one

which should be used in case of an estrangement--a few bars of

Schumann's melody, "The Nut Bush," should be sent, and the one who

received it should at once hurry to the side of the other and all

difference should be healed. But this token was never sent by me,

perhaps because I did not know how to scribble the musical phrase:

pride perhaps kept her from sending it; in any case five years are a

long while, and she seemed to have died out of my life altogether; but

one day the sight of a woman who had known her, brought her before my

eyes, and I asked if Doris married. The woman could not tell me; she

had not seen her for many years; they, too, were estranged, and I went

home saying to myself: "Doris must be married. What sort of a husband

has she chosen? Is she happy? Has she a baby? Oh, shameful thought!"

Do you remember, dear reader, how Balzac, when he had come to the last

page of "Massimilla Doni," declares that he dare not tell you the end

of this adventure. One word, he says, will suffice for the worshippers

of the ideal: "Massimilla Doni was expecting." Then in a passage that

is pleasanter to think about than to read--for Balzac when he spoke

about art was something of a sciolist, and I am not sure that the

passage is altogether grammatical--he tells how the ideas of all the

great artists, painters, and sculptors--the ideas they have wrought on

panels and in stone--escaped from their niches and their frames--all

these disembodied maidens gathered round Massimilla's bed and wept. It

would be as disgraceful for Doris to be "expecting" as it was for

Massimilla Doni, and I like to think of all the peris, the nymphs, the

sylphs, the fairies of ancient legend, all her kinsfolk gathering

about her bed, deploring her condition, regarding her as lost to

them--were such a thing to happen I should certainly kneel there in

spirit with them. And feeling just as Balzac did about Massimilla

Doni, that it was a sacrilege that Doris should be "expecting" or even

married, I wrote, omitting, however, to tell her why I had suddenly

resolved to break silence; I sent her a little note, only a few words,

that I was sorry not to have heard of her for so long a time; but

though we had been estranged she had not been forgotten; a little

commonplace note, relieved perhaps by a touch of wistfulness, of

regret. And this note was sent by a messenger duly instructed to ask

for an answer. The news the messenger brought back was somewhat

disappointing. The lady was away, but the letter would be forwarded to

her. "She is not married," I thought; "were she married her name would

be sent to me.... Perhaps not." Other thoughts came into my mind, and

I did not think of her again for the next two days, not till a long

telegram was put into my hand. Doris! It had come from her. It had

come more than a thousand miles, "regardless of expense." I said,

"This telegram must have cost her ten or twelve shillings at the

least." She was delighted to hear from me; she had been ill, but was

better now, and the telegram concluded with the usual "Am writing."

The letter that arrived, two days afterwards, was like herself, full

of impulse and affection; but it contained one phrase which put black

misgiving into my heart. In her description of her illness and her

health, which was returning, and how she had come to be staying in

this far-away Southern town, she alluded to its dulness, saying that

if I came there virtue must be its own reward. "Stupid of her to speak

to me of virtue," I muttered, "for she must know well enough that it

was her partial virtue that had separated us and caused this long

estrangement." And I sat pondering, trying to discover if she applied

the phrase to herself or to the place where she was staying. How could

it apply to the place? All places would be a paradise if----

At the close of a long December evening I wrote a letter, the answer

to which would decide whether I should go to her, whether I should

undertake the long journey. "The journey back will be detestable," I

muttered, and taking up the pen again I wrote: "Your letter contains a

phrase which fills me with dismay: you say, 'Virtue must be its own

reward,' and this would seem that you are determined to be more

aggressively Platonic than ever. Doris, this is ill news indeed; you

would not have me consider it good news, would you?"

Other letters followed, but I doubt if I knew more of Doris's

intentions when I got into the train than I did when I sat pondering

by my fireside, trying to discover her meaning when she wrote that

vile phrase, "Virtue must be its own reward." But somehow I seemed to

have come to a decision, and that was the main thing. We act obeying a

law deep down in our being, a law which in normal circumstances we are

not aware of. I asked myself as I drove to the station, if it were

possible that I was going to undertake a journey of more than a

thousand miles in quest--of what? Doris's pretty face! It might be

pretty no longer; yet she could not have changed much. She had said

she was sure that in ten minutes we should be talking just as in old

times. Even so, none but madmen travel a thousand miles in search of a

pretty face. And it was the madman that is in us all that was

propelling me, or was it the primitive man who crouches in some jungle

of our being? Of one thing I was sure, that I was no longer a

conventional citizen of the nineteenth century; I had gone back two or

three thousand years, for all characteristic traits, everything

whereby I knew myself, had disappeared! Yet I seemed to have met

myself somewhere, in some book or poem or opera.... I could not

remember at first, but after some time I began to perceive a shadowy

similarity between myself and--dare I mention the names?--the heroes

of ancient legend--Menelaus or Jason--which? Both had gone a thousand

miles on Beauty's quest. The colour of Helen's hair isn't mentioned in

either the "Iliad" or the "Odyssey." Jason's quest was a golden

fleece, and so was mine. And it was the primitive hero that I had

discovered in myself that helped me to face the idea of the journey,

for there is nothing that wearies me so much as a long journey in the

train.

When I was twenty I started with the intention of long travel, but the

train journey from Calais to Paris wearied me so much that I had

rested in Paris for eight years, to return home then on account of

some financial embarrassments. During those eight years I thought

often of Italy and the south of France, but the train journey of

sixteen or seventeen or eighteen hours to the Italian frontier always

seemed so much like what purgatory must be, that the heaven of Italy

on the other side never tempted me sufficiently to undertake it. A

companion would be of no use; one cannot talk for fifteen or sixteen

hours, and while debating with myself whether I should go to Plessy, I

often glanced down the long perspective of hours. Everything, pleasure

and pain alike, are greater in imagination than in reality--there is

always a reaction, and having anticipated more than mortal weariness,

I was surprised to find that the first two hours in the train passed

very pleasantly. It seemed that I had only been in the train quite a

little while when it stopped, yet Laroche is more than an hour from

Paris, quite a countryside station, and it seems strange that the

_Côte d'Azur_ should stop there. That was the grand name of the

train that I was travelling by. Think of any English company running a

train and calling it "The Azure Shore"! Think of going to Euston or to

Charing Cross, saying you are going by "The Azure Shore"! So long as

the name of this train endures, it is impossible to doubt that the

French mind is more picturesque than the English, and one no longer

wonders why the French school of painting, etc.

A fruit seller was crying his wares along the platform, and just

before we started from Laroche breakfast was preparing on board the

train; I thought a basket of French grapes--the grapes that grow in

the open air, not the leathery hot-house grapes filled with lumps of

glue that we eat in England--would pass the time. I got out and bought

a basket from him. On journeys like these one has to resort to many

various little expedients. Alas! The grapes were decaying; only the

bunch on the top was eatable; nor was that one worth eating, and I

began to think that the railway company's attention should be directed

to the fraud, for in my case a deliberate fraud had been effected. The

directors of the railway would probably think that passengers should

exercise some discrimination; it were surely easy for the passenger to

examine the quality of a basket of grapes before purchasing--that

would be the company's answer to my letter. The question of a letter

to the newspaper did not arise, for French papers are not like

ours--they do not print all the letters that are sent to them. The

French public has no means of ventilating its grievances; a misfortune

no doubt, but not such a misfortune as it seems, when one reflects on

how little good a letter addressed to the public press does in the way

of remedying abuses.

I don't think we stopped again till we got to Lyons, and all the way

there I sat at the window looking at the landscape--the long, long

plain that the French peasant cultivates unceasingly. Out of that long

plain came all the money that was lost in Panama, and all the money

invested in Russian bonds--fine milliards came out of the French

peasants' stockings. We passed through La Beauce. I believe it was

there that Zola went to study the French peasant before he wrote "La

Terre." Huysmans, with that benevolent malice so characteristic of

him, used to say that Zola's investigation was limited to going out

once for a drive in a carriage with Madame Zola. The primitive man

that had risen out of some jungle of my being did not view this

immense and highly cultivated plain sympathetically. It seemed to him

to differ little from the town, so utterly was nature dominated by man

and portioned out. On a subject like this one can meditate for a long

time, and I meditated till my meditation was broken by the stopping of

the train. We were at Lyons. The tall white-painted houses reminded me

of Paris--Lyons, as seen from the windows of _La Côte d'Azur_ at

the end of a grey December day might be Paris. The climate seemed the

same; the sky was as sloppy and as grey. At last the train stopped at

a place from which I could look down a side street, and I decided that

Lyons wore a more provincial look than Paris, and I thought of the

great silk trade and the dull minds of the merchants ... their dinner

parties, etc. I noticed everything there was to notice in order to

pass the time; but there was so little of interest that I wrote out a

telegram and ran with it to the office, for Doris did not know what

train I was coming by, and it is pleasant to be met at a station, to

meet one familiar face, not to find oneself amid a crowd of strangers.

Very nearly did I miss the train; my foot was on the footboard when

the guard blew his whistle. "Just fancy if I had missed the train," I

said, and settling myself in my seat I added, "now, let us study the

landscape; such an opportunity as this may never occur again."

The long plain cultivated with tedious regularity that we had been

passing through before we came to Lyons, flowed on field after field;

it seemed as if we should never reach the end of it, and looking on

those same fields, for they were the same, I said to myself: "If I

were an economist that plain would interest me, but since I got

Doris's letter I am primitive man, and he abhors the brown and the

waving field, and 'the spirit in his feet' leads him to some grassy

glen where he follows his flocks, listening to the song of the wilding

bee that sings as it labours amid the gorse. What a soulless race that

plain must breed," I thought; "what soulless days are lived there;

peasants going forth at dusk to plough, and turning home at dusk to

eat, procreate and sleep." At last a river appeared flowing amid

sparse and stunted trees and reeds, a great wide sluggish river with

low banks, flowing so slowly that it hardly seemed to flow at all.

Rooks flew past, but they are hardly wilding birds; a crow--yes, we

saw one; and I thought of a heron rising slowly out of one of the

reedy islands; maybe an otter or two survives the persecution of the

peasant, and I liked to think of a poacher picking up a rabbit here

and there; hares must have almost disappeared, even the flock and the

shepherd. France is not as picturesque a country as England; only

Normandy seems to have pasturage, there alone the shepherd survives

along the banks of the Seine. Picardy, though a swamp, never conveys

an idea of the wild; and the middle of France, which I looked at then

for the first time, shocked me, for primitive man, as I have said, was

uppermost in me, and I turned away from the long plain, "Dreary," I

said, "uneventful as a boarding-house."

But it is a long plain that has no hill in it, and when I looked out

again a whole range showed so picturesquely that I could not refrain,

but turned to a travelling companion to ask its name. It was the

Esterelles; and never shall I forget the picturesqueness of one

moment--the jagged end of the Esterelles projecting over the valley,

showing against what remained of the sunset, one or two bars of dusky

red, disappearing rapidly amid heavy clouds massing themselves as if

for a storm, and soon after night closed over the landscape.

"Henceforth," I said, "I shall have to look to my own thoughts for

amusement," and in my circumstances there was nothing reasonable for me

to think of but Doris. Some time before midnight I should catch sight

of her on the platform. It seemed to me wonderful that it should be

so, and I must have been dreaming, for the voice of the guard, crying

out that dinner was served awoke me with a start.

It is said to be the habit of my countrymen never to get into

conversation with strangers in the train, but I doubt if that be so.

Everything depends on the tact of him who first breaks silence; if his

manner inspires confidence in his fellow-traveller he will receive

such answers as will carry the conversation on for a minute or two,

and in that time both will have come to a conclusion whether the

conversation should be continued or dropped. A pleasant little book

might be written about train acquaintances. If I were writing such a

book I would tell of the Americans I once met at Nuremberg, and with

whom I travelled to Paris; it was such a pleasant journey. I should

have liked to keep up their acquaintance, but it is not the etiquette

of the road to do so. But I am writing no such book; I am writing the

quest of a golden fleece, and may allow myself no further deflection

in the narrative; I may tell, however, of the two very interesting

people I met at dinner on board _La Côte d'Azur_, though some

readers will doubt if it be any integral part of my story. The woman

was a typical French woman, pleasant and agreeable, a woman of the

upper middle classes, so she seemed to me, but as I knew all her ideas

the moment I looked at her, conversation with her did not flourish; or

would it be more true to say that her husband interested me more,

being less familiar? His accent told me he was French; but when he

took off his hat I could see that he had come from the

tropics--Algeria I thought; not unlikely a soldier. His talk was less

stilted than a soldier's, and I began to notice that he did not look

like a Frenchman, and when he told me that he lived in an oasis in the

desert, and was on his way home, his Oriental appearance I explained

by his long residence among the Arabs. He had lived in the desert

since he was fourteen. "Almost a Saharian," I said to him. And during

dinner, and long after dinner we sat talking of the difference

between the Oriental races and the European; of the various Arab

_patois_. He spoke the Tunisean _patois_ and wrote the language

of the Koran, which is understood all over the Sahara and the

Soudan, as well as in Mecca. What interested me, perhaps even more

than the language question, was the wilding's enterprise in attempting

to cultivate the desert. He had already enlarged his estate by the

discovery of two ancient Roman wells, and he had no doubt that all

that part of the desert lying between the three oases could be brought

into cultivation. In ancient times there were not three oases but one;

the wells had been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of acres had

been laid waste by the Numidians in order, I think he told me, to save

themselves from the Saracens who were following them. He spent eight

months of every year in his oasis, and begged of me, as soon as I had

wearied of Cannes, to take the boat from Marseilles--I suppose it was

from Marseilles--and spend some time with him in the wild.

"Visitors," he said, "are rare. You'll be very welcome. The railway

will take you within a hundred miles; the last hundred miles will be

accomplished on the back of a dromedary; I shall send you a fleet one

and an escort."

"Splendid," I answered. "I see myself arriving sitting high up on the

hump gathering dates--I suppose there are date palms where you are?

Yes?--and wearing a turban and a bournous."

"Would you like to see my bournous?" he said, and opening his valise

he showed me a splendid one which filled me with admiration, and only

shame forbade me to ask him to allow me to try it on. Ideas haunt one.

When I was a little child I insisted on wearing a turban and going out

for a ride on the pony, flourishing a Damascus blade which my father

had brought home from the East. Nothing else would have satisfied me;

my father led the pony, and I have always thought this fantasy

exceedingly characteristic; it must be so, for it awoke in me twenty

years afterwards; and fanciful and absurd as it may appear, I

certainly should have liked to have worn my travelling companion's

bournous in the train if only for a few minutes. All this is twelve

years ago, and I have not yet gone to visit him in his oasis, but how

many times have I done so in my imagination, seeing myself arriving on

the back of a dromedary crying out, "Allah! Allah! And Mohammed is his

prophet!" But though one can go on thinking year after year about a

bournous, one cannot talk for more than two or three hours about one;

and though I looked forward to spending at least a fortnight with my

friends, and making excursions in the desert, finding summer, as

Fromentin says, _chez lui_, I was glad to say good-bye to my

friends at Marseilles.

I was still quite far from the end of my journey, and so weary of talk

that at first I was doubtful whether or not it would be worth while to

engage again in conversation, but a pleasant gentleman had got into my

carriage, and he required little encouragement to tell me his story.

His beginnings were very humble, but he was now a rich merchant. It is

always interesting to hear how the office boy gets his first chance;

the first steps are the interesting ones, and I should be able to tell

his story here if we had not been interrupted in the middle of it by

his little girl. She had wearied of her mother, who was in the next

carriage, and had come in to sit on her father's knee. Her hair hung

about her shoulders just as Doris's had done five years ago, taking

the date from the day that I journeyed in quest of the golden fleece.

She was a winsome child, with a little fluttering smile about her lips

and a curious intelligence in her eyes. She admitted that she was

tired, but had not been ill, and her father told me that long train

journeys produced the same effect on her as a sea journey. She spoke

with a pretty abruptness, and went away suddenly, I thought for good,

but she returned half an hour afterwards looking a little faint, I

thought, green about the mouth, and smiling less frequently. One

cannot remember everything, and I have forgotten at what station these

people got out; they bade me a kindly farewell, telling me that in

about two hours and a half I should be at Plessy, and that I should

have to change at the next station, and this lag end of my journey

dragged itself out very wearily.

Plessy is difficult to get at; one has to change, and while waiting

for the train I seemed to lose heart; nothing seemed to matter, not

even Doris. But these are momentary capitulations of the intellect and

the senses, and when I saw her pretty face on the platform I

congratulated myself again on my wisdom in having sent her the

telegram. How much pleasanter it was to walk with her to the hotel

than to walk there alone! "She is," I said to myself, "still the same

pretty girl whom I so bitterly reproached for selfishness in

Cumberland Place five years ago." To compliment her on her looks, to

tell her that she did not look a day older, a little thinner, a little

paler, that was all, but the same enchanting Doris, was the facile

inspiration of the returned lover. And we walked down the platform

talking, my talk full of gentle reproof--why had she waited up? There

was a reason.... My hopes, till now buoyant as corks, began to sink.

"She is going to tell me that I cannot come to her hotel. Why did I

send that telegram from Lyons?" Had it not been for that telegram I

could have gone straight to her hotel. It was just the telegram that

had brought her to the station, and she had come to tell me that it

was impossible for me to stay at her hotel.

After thirty hours of travel it mattered little which hotel I stayed

at, but to-morrow and the next day, the long week we were to spend

together passed before my eyes, the tedium of the afternoons, the

irritation and emptiness of Platonic evenings--"Heavens! what have I

let myself in for," I thought, and my mind went back over the long

journey and the prospect of returning _bredouille_, as the

sportsmen say. But to argue about details with a woman, to get angry,

is a thing that no one versed in the arts of love ever does. We are in

the hands of women always; it is they who decide, and our best plan is

to accept the different hotel without betraying disappointment, or as

little as possible. But we had not seen each other for so long that we

could not part at once. Doris said that I must come to her hotel and

eat some supper. No; I had dined on board the train, and all she could

persuade me to have was a cup of chocolate. Over that cup of chocolate

we talked for an hour, and then I had to bid her good-night. The moon

looked down the street coldly; I crossed from shadow to light, feeling

very weary in all my body, and there was a little melancholy in my

heart, for after all I might not win Doris. There was sleep, however,

and sleep is at times a good thing, and that night it must have come

quickly, so great was the refreshment I experienced in the morning

when my eyes opened and, looking through mosquito curtains (themselves

symbols of the South), were delighted by the play of the sunlight

flickering along the flower-papered wall. The impulse in me was to

jump out of bed at once and to throw open _les croisées_. And

what did I see? Tall palm trees in the garden, and above them a dim,

alluring sky, and beyond them a blue sea in almost the same tone as

the sky. And what did I feel? Soft perfumed airs moving everywhere.

And what was the image that rose up in my mind? The sensuous

gratification of a vision of a woman bathing at the edge of a summer

wood, the intoxication of the odour of her breasts.... Why should I

think of a woman bathing at the edge of a summer wood? Because the

morning seemed the very one that Venus should choose to rise from the

sea.

Forgive my sensuousness, dear reader; remember it was the first time I

breathed the soft Southern air, the first time I saw orange trees;

remember I am a poet, a modern Jason in search of a golden fleece. "Is

this the garden of the Hesperides?" I asked myself, for nothing seemed

more unreal than the golden fruit hanging like balls of yellow worsted

among dark and sleek leaves; it reminded me of the fruit I used to see

when I was a child under glass shades in lodging-houses, but I knew,

nevertheless, that I was looking upon orange trees, and that the

golden fruit growing amid the green leaves was the fruit I used to

pick from the barrows when I was a boy; the fruit of which I ate so

much in boyhood that I cannot eat it any longer; the fruit whose smell

we associate with the pit of a theatre; the fruit that women never

grow weary of, high and low. It seemed to me a wonderful thing that at

last I should see oranges growing on trees; I so happy, so singularly

happy, that I am nearly sure that happiness is, after all, no more

than a faculty for being surprised. Since I was a boy I never felt so

surprised as I did that morning. The _valet de chambre_ brought

in my bath, and while I bathed and dressed I reflected on the luck of

him who in middle age can be astonished by a blue sky, and still find

the sunlight a bewitchment. But who would not be bewitched by the

pretty sunlight that finds its way into the gardens of Plessy? I knew

I was going to walk with Doris by a sea blue as any drop-curtain, and

for a moment Doris seemed to be but a figure on a drop-curtain. Am I

very cynical? But are we not all figures on drop-curtains, and is not

everything comic opera, and "La Belle Hélène" perhaps the only true

reality? Amused by the idea of Jason or Paris or Menelaus in Plessy, I

asked Doris what music was played by the local orchestra, and she told

me it played "The March of Aïda" every evening. "Oh, the cornet," I

said, and I understood that the mission of Plessy was to redeem one

from the coil of one's daily existence, from Hebrew literature and its

concomitants, bishops, vicars, and curates--all these, especially

bishops, are regarded as being serious; whereas French novels and

their concomitants, pretty girls, are supposed to represent the

trivial side of life. A girl becomes serious only when she is engaged

to be married; the hiring of the house in which the family is reared

is regarded as serious; in fact all prejudices are serious; every

deflection from the normal, from the herd, is looked upon as trivial;

and I suppose that this is right: the world could not do without the

herd nor could the herd do without us--the eccentrics who go to Plessy

in quest of a golden fleece instead of putting stoves in the parish

churches (stoves and organs are always regarded as too devilishly

serious for words).

Once I had a long conversation with my archbishop concerning the Book

of Daniel, and were I to write out his lordship's erudition I might

even be deemed sufficiently serious for a review in the _Church

Gazette_. But looking back on this interview and judging it with

all the impartiality of which my nature is capable, I cannot in truth

say that I regard it as more serious than pretty Doris's fluent

conversation, or the melancholy aspect of his lordship's cathedral as

more serious than the pretty Southern sunlight glancing along the

seashore, lighting up the painted houses, and causing Doris to open

her parasol. What a splendid article I might write on the trivial side

of seriousness, but discussion is always trivial; I shall be much more

serious in trying to recall the graceful movement of the opening of

her parasol, and how prettily it enframed her face. True that almost

every face is pretty against the distended silk full of sunlight and

shadow, but Doris's, I swear to you, was as pretty as any medieval

virgin despite its modernness. Memline himself never designed a more

appealing little face. Think of the enchantment of such a face after a

long journey, by the sea that the Romans and the Greeks used to cross

in galleys, that I used to read about when I was a boy. There it was,

and on the other side the shore on which Carthage used to stand; there

it was, a blue bay with long red hills reaching out, reminding me of

hills I had seen somewhere, I think in a battle piece by Salvator

Rosa. It seemed to me that I had seen those hills before--no, not in a

picture; had I dreamed them, or was there some remembrance of a

previous existence struggling in my brain? There was a memory

somewhere, a broken memory, and I sought for the lost thread as well

as I could, for Doris rarely ceased talking.

"And there is the restaurant," she said, flinging up her parasol,

"built at the end of those rocks."

We were the first swallows to arrive; the flocks would not be here for

about three weeks. So we had the restaurant to ourselves, the waiter

and doubtless the cook; and they gave us all their attention. Would we

have breakfast in the glass pavilion? How shall I otherwise describe

it, for it seemed to be all glass? The scent of the sea came through

the window, and the air was like a cordial--it intoxicated; and

looking across the bay one seemed to be looking on the very thing that

Whistler had sought for in his Nocturnes, and that Steer had nearly

caught in that picture of children paddling, that dim, optimistic blue

that allures and puts the world behind one, the dream of the

opium-eater, the phrase of the syrens in "Tannhäuser," the phrase

which begins like a barcarolle; but the accompaniment tears underneath

until we thrill with expectation.

As I looked across the bay, Doris seemed but a little thing, almost

insignificant, and the thought came that I had not come for nothing

even if I did not succeed in winning her.

"Doris, dear, forgive me if I am looking at this bay instead of you,

but I've never seen anything like this before," and feeling I was

doing very poor justice to the emotions I was experiencing, I said:

"Is it not strange that all this is at once to me new and old? I seem,

as it were, to have come into my inheritance."

"Your inheritance! Am I not----"

"Dearest, you are. Say that you are my inheritance, my beautiful

inheritance; how many years have I waited for it?" As I took her in my

arms she caught sight of the waiter, and turning from her I looked

across the bay, and my desire nearly died in the infinite sweetness

blowing across the bay.

"Azure hills, not blue; hitherto I have only seen blue."

"They're blue to-day because there is a slight mist, but they are in

reality red."

"A red-hilled bay," I said, "and all the slopes flecked with the white

sides of villas."

"Peeping through olive trees."

"Olive trees, of course. I have never yet seen the olive; the olive

begins at Avignon or thereabouts, doesn't it? It was dark night when

we passed through Avignon."

"You'll see very few trees here; only olives and ilex."

"The ilex I know, and there is no more beautiful tree than the ilex."

"Were not the crocuses that grew

Under that ilex tree,

As beautiful in scent and hue

As ever fed the bee?"

"Whose verses are those?"

"Shelley's. I know no others. Are the lines very wonderful? They seem

no more than a statement, yet they hang about my memory. I am glad I

shall see the ilex tree."

"And the eucalyptus--plenty of eucalyptus trees."

"That was the scent that followed us this morning as we came through

the gardens."

"Yes, as we passed from our hotel one hung over the garden wall, and

the wind carried its scent after us."

The arrival of the waiter with _hors d'oeuvres_ distracted our

attention from the olive tree to its fruit, I rarely touch olives, but

that morning I ate many. Should we have mutton cutlets or lamb? Doris

said the Southern mutton was detestable. "Then we'll have lamb." An

idea came into my head, and it was this, that I had been mistaken

about Doris's beauty. Hers was not like any face that one may find in

a panel by Memline. She was like something, but I could not lay my

thoughts on what she was like.

"A sail would spoil the beauty of the bay," I said when the waiter

brought in the coffee, and left us--we hoped for the last time. Taking

hands and going to the window we sat looking across the sailless bay.

"How is it that no ships come here? Is the bay looked upon as a mere

ornament and reserved exclusively for the appreciation of visitors?

Those hills, too, look as if they had been designed in a like

intent.... How much more beautiful the bay is without a sail--why I

cannot tell, but----"

"But what?"

"A great galley rowed by fifty men would look well in this bay.... The

bay is antiquity, and those hills; all the morning while talking to

you a memory or a shadow of a memory has fretted in my mind like a fly

on a pane. Now I know why I have been expecting a nymph to rise out of

those waves during breakfast. For a thousand years men believed that

nymphs came up on those rocks, and that satyrs and their progeny might

be met in the woods and on the hillsides. Only a thin varnish has been

passed over these beliefs. One has only to come here to look down into

that blue sea-water to believe that nymphs swim about those rocks; and

when we go for a drive among those hillsides we'll keep a sharp

lookout for satyrs. Now I know why I like this country. It is heathen.

Those mountains--how different from the shambling Irish hills from

whence I have come! And you, Doris, you might have been dug up

yesterday, though you are but two-and-twenty. You are a thing of

yester age, not a bit like the little Memline head which I imagined

you to be like when I was coming here in the train, nor like anything

done by the Nuremberg painters. You are a Tanagra figure, and one of

the finest. In you I read all the winsomeness of antiquity. But I must

look at the bay now, for I may never see anything like it again; never

have I seen anything like it before. Forgive me, remember that three

days ago I was in Ireland, the day before yesterday I was in England,

yesterday I was in Paris. I have come out of the greyness of the

North. When I left Paris all was grey, and when the train passed

through Lyons a grey night was gathering; now I see no cloud at all:

the change is so wonderful. You cannot appreciate my admiration. You

have been looking at the bay for the last three weeks, and _La côte

d'azur_ has become nothing to you now but palms and promenades. To

me it is still quite different. I shall always see you beautiful,

whereas Plessy may lose her beauty in a few days. Let me enjoy it

while I may."

"Perhaps I shall not outlast Plessy."

"Yes, you will. Do you know, Doris, that you don't look a day older

since the first time I saw you walking across the room to the piano in

your white dress, your gold hair hanging down over your shoulders. It

has darkened a little, that is all."

"It is provoking you should see me when I am thin. I wish you had seen

me last year when I came from the rest cure. I went up more than a

stone in weight. Every one said that I didn't look more than sixteen.

I know I didn't, for all the women were jealous of me."

As I sat watching the dissolving line of the horizon, lost in a dream,

I heard my companion say:

"Of what are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking of something that happened long ago in that very bay."

"Tell me about it;" and her hand sought mine for a moment.

"Would you like to hear it? I'd like to tell it, but it's a long, long

story, and to remember it would be an effort. The colour of the sea

and the sky is enough; the warmth of the sunlight penetrates me; I

feel like a plant; the only difference between me and one of those

palm trees----"

"I am sure those poor palms are shivering. There is not enough heat

here for them; they come from the south, and you come from the north."

"I suppose that is so. They grow, but they don't flourish here.

However, my mood is not philanthropic; I cannot pity even a palm tree

at the present moment. See how my cigar smoke curls and goes out! It

is strange, Doris, that I should meet you here, for some years ago it

was arranged that I should come here----"

"With a woman?"

"Yes, of course. How can it be otherwise? Our lives are woven along

and across with women. Some men find the reality of their lives in

women, others, as we were saying just now, in bishops."

"Tell me about the woman who asked you to come here? Did you love her?

And what prevented you from coming here with her?"

"It is one of the oddest stories--odd only because it is like myself.

Every character creates it own stories; we are like spools, and each

spool fills itself up with a different-coloured thread. The story,

such as it is, began one evening in Victoria Street at the end of a

long day's work. A letter began it. She wrote asking me to dine with

her, and her letter was most welcome, for I had no plans for that

evening. I do not know if you know that curious dread of life which

steals through the twilight; it had just laid its finger on my

shoulder when the bell rang, and I said: 'My visitor is welcome,

whoever she or he may be.' The visitor would have only spent a few

minutes perhaps with me, but Gertrude's letter--that was her name--was

a promise of a long and pleasant evening, for it was more than a mere

invitation to dinner. She wrote: 'I have not asked any one to meet

you, but you will not mind dining alone with me. I hope you will be

able to come, for I want to consult you on a matter about which I

think you will be able to advise me.' As I dressed I wondered what she

could have to propose, and with my curiosity enkindled I walked to her

house. The evening was fine--I remember it--and she did not live far

from me; we were neighbours. You see I knew Gertrude pretty well, and

I liked her. There had been some love passages between us, but I had

never been her lover; our story had got entangled, and as I went to

her I hoped that this vexatious knot was to be picked at last. To be

Gertrude's lover would be a pleasure indeed, for though a woman of

forty, a natural desire to please, a witty mind, and pretty manners

still kept her young; she had all the appearance of youth; and French

gowns and underwear that cost a little fortune made her a woman that

one would still take a pleasure in making love to. It would be

pleasant to be her lover for many reasons. There were disadvantages,

however, for Gertrude, though never vulgar herself, liked vulgar

things. Her friends were vulgar; her flat, for she had just left her

husband, was opulent, overdecorated; the windows were too heavily

curtained, the electric light seemed to be always turned on, and as

for the pictures--well, we won't talk of them; Gertrude was the only

one worth looking at. And she was rather like a Salon picture, a

Gervex, a Boldeni--I will not be unjust to Gertrude, she was not as

vulgar as a Boldeni. She had a pretty cooing manner, and her white

dress fell gracefully from her slender flanks. You can see her, can't

you, coming forward to meet me, rustling a little, breathing an odour

of orris root, taking my hand and very nearly pressing it against her

bosom? Gertrude knew how to suggest, and no sooner had the thought

that she wished to inspire passed through my mind than she let go my

hand, saying: 'Come, sit down by me, tell me what you have been

doing'; and her charm was that it was impossible to say whether what I

have described, dress, manner, and voice, was unconscious or

intentional."

"Probably a little of both," Doris said.

"I see you understand. You always understand."

"And to make amends for the familiarity of pressing your hand to her

bosom she would say: 'I hope you will not mind dining alone with me,'

and immediately you would propound a little theory that two is company

and three is a county council, unless indeed the three consist of two

men and one woman. A woman is never really happy unless she is talking

to two men, woman being at heart a polyandrist."

"Doris, you know me so well that you can invent my conversations."

"Yes, I think I can. You have not changed; I have not forgotten you

though we have not seen each other for five years; and now go on, tell

me about Gertrude."

"Well, sitting beside her on the sofa----"

"Under the shaded electric light," interrupted Doris.

"I tried to discover--not the reason of this invitation to dinner; of

course it was natural that old friends should dine together, but she

had said in her letter that she wished to talk to me about some matter

on which she thought I could advise her. The servant would come in a

moment to announce that dinner was ready, and if Gertrude did not tell

me at once I might, if the story were a long one, have to wait till

dinner was over; her reluctance to confide in me seemed to point to

pecuniary help. Was it possible that Gertrude was going to ask me to

lend her money! If so, the loan would be a heavy one, more than I

could afford to lend. That is the advantage of knowing rich people;

when they ask for money they ask for more than one can afford to lend,

and one can say with truth: 'Were I to lend you five hundred pounds,

I should not be able to make ends meet at the end of the year.' Her

reluctance to confide in me seemed incomprehensible, unless indeed she

wanted to borrow money. But Gertrude was not that kind, and she was a

rich woman. At last, just before the servant came into the room, she

turned round saying that she had sent for me because she wished to

speak to me about a yacht. Imagine my surprise. To speak to me about a

yacht! If it had been about the picture.

"The door opened, the servant announced that dinner was ready, and we

had to talk in French during dinner, for her news was that she had

hired a yacht for the winter in order that she might visit Greece and

the Greek Islands. But she did not dare to travel in Greece alone for

six months, and it was difficult to find a man who was free and whom

one could trust. She thought she could trust me, and remembering that

I had once liked her, it had occurred to her to ask me if I would like

to go with her. I shall never forget how Gertrude confided her plan to

me, the charming modesty with which she murmured: 'Perhaps you do

still, and you will not bore me by claiming rights over me. I don't

mind your making love to me, but I don't like rights. You know what I

mean. When we return to England you will not pursue me. You know what

I have suffered from such pursuits; you know all about it?' Is it not

curious how a woman will sometimes paint her portrait in a single

phrase; not paint, but indicate in half-a-dozen lines her whole moral

nature? Gertrude exists in the words I have quoted just as God made

her. And now I have to tell you about the pursuit. When Gertrude

mentioned it I had forgotten it; a blankness came into my face, and

she said: 'Don't you remember?' 'Of course, of course,' I said, and

this is the story within the story.

"One day after lunch Gertrude, getting up, walked unconsciously

towards me, and quite naturally I took her in my arms, and when I had

told her how much I liked her, and the pleasure I took in her company,

she promised to meet me at a hotel in Lincoln. We were to meet there

in a fortnight's time; but two days before she sent for me, and told

me that she would have to send me away. I really did like Gertrude,

and I was quite overcome, and a long hour was spent begging of her to

tell why she had come to this determination. One of course says unjust

things, one accuses a woman of cruelty; what could be the meaning of

it? Did she like to play with a man as a cat plays with a mouse? But

Gertrude, though she seemed distressed at my accusations, refused to

give me any explanation of her conduct; tears came into her eyes--they

seemed like genuine tears--and it was difficult to believe that she

had taken all this trouble merely to arrive at this inexplicable and

most disagreeable end. Months passed without my hearing anything of

Gertrude, till one day she sent me a little present, and in response

to a letter she invited me to come to see her in the country. And,

walking through some beautiful woods, she told me the reason why she

had not gone to Lincoln. A Pole whom she had met at the gambling

tables at Monte Carlo was pursuing her, threatening her that if he saw

her with any other man he would murder her and her lover. This at

first seemed an incredible tale, but when she entered into details,

there could be no doubt that she was telling the truth, for had she

not on one occasion very nearly lost her life through this man? They

were in Germany together, she and the Pole, and he had locked her up

in her room without food for many hours, and coming in suddenly he had

pressed the muzzle of a pistol against her temple and pulled the

trigger. Fortunately, it did not go off. 'It was a very near thing,'

she said; 'the cartridge was indented, and I made up my mind that if

things went any further, I should have to tell my husband.' 'But

things can't go further than an indented cartridge,' I answered. 'What

you tell me is terrible'; and we talked for a long time, walking about

the woods, fearing that the Pole might spring from behind every bush,

the pistol in his hand. But he did not appear; she evidently knew

where he was, or had made some compact with him. Nevertheless, at the

close of the day, I drove through the summer evening not having got

anything from Gertrude except a promise that if she should find

herself free, she would send for me. Weeks and months went by during

which I saw Gertrude occasionally; you see love stories, once they get

entangled, remain entangled; that is what makes me fear that we shall

never be able to pick the knot that you have tied our love story into.

Misadventure followed misadventure. It seems to me that I behaved very

stupidly on many occasions; it would take too long to tell you

how--when I met her at the theatre I did not do exactly what I should

have done; and on another occasion when I met her driving in a suburb,

I did not stop her cab, and so on and so on until, resolved to bring

matters to a crisis, Gertrude had sent me an invitation to dinner, and

her plan was the charming one which I have told you, that we should

spend six months sailing about the Greek Islands in a yacht. We left

the dining-room and returned to the drawing-room, she telling me that

the yacht had been paid for--the schooner, the captain, the crew,

everything for six months; but I not unnaturally pointed out to her

that I could not accept her hospitality for so long a time, and the

greater part of the evening was spent in trying to persuade her to

allow me to pay--Gertrude was the richer--at least a third of the

upkeep of the yacht must come out of my pocket.

"The prospect of a six months' cruise among the Greek Islands kindled

my imagination, and while listening to Gertrude I was often in spirit

far away, landing perchance at Cyprus, exalted at the prospect of

visiting the Cyprians' temple; or perchance standing with Gertrude on

the deck of the yacht watching the stars growing dim in the east; the

sailors would be singing at the time, and out of the ashen stillness a

wind would come, and again we would hear the ripple of the water

parting as the jib filled and drew the schooner eastward. I imagined

how half an hour later an island would appear against the golden sky,

a lofty island lined with white buildings, perchance ancient fanes.

'What a delicious book my six months with Gertrude will be!' I said as

I walked home, and the title of the book was an inspiration, 'An

Unsentimental Journey.' It was Gertrude's own words that had suggested

it. Had she not said that she did not mind my making love to her, but

she did not like rights? She couldn't complain if I wrote a book, and

I imagined how every evening when the lover left her, the chronicler

would sit for an hour recording his impressions. Very often he would

continue writing until the pencil dropped from his hand, till he fell

asleep in the chair. An immediate note-taking would be necessary, so

fugitive are impressions, and an analysis of his feelings, their

waxing and their waning; he would observe himself as an astronomer

observes the course of a somewhat erratic star, and his descriptions

of himself and of her would be interwoven with descriptions of the

seas across which Menelaus had gone after Helen's beauty--beauty, the

noblest of men's quests.

"For once Nature seemed to me to put into the hands of the artist a

subject perfect in its every part; the end especially delighted me,

and I imagined our good-byes at Plymouth or Portsmouth or Hull,

wherever we might land. 'Well, Gertrude, goodbye. We have spent a very

pleasant six months together; I shall never forget our excursion. But

this is not a rupture; I may hope to see you some time during the

season? You will allow me to call about tea-time?' And she would

answer: 'Yes, you may call. You have been very nice.' Each would turn

away sighing, conscious of a little melancholy in the heart, for all

partings are sad; but at the bottom of the heart there would be a

sense of relief, of gladness--that gladness which the bird feels when

it leaves its roost: there is nothing more delicious perhaps than the

first beat of the wings. I forget now whether I looked forward most to

the lady or to the book.... If the winds had been more propitious, I

might have written a book that would have compared favourably with the

eighteenth-century literature, for the eighteenth century was cynical

in love; while making love to a woman, a gallant would often consider

a plan for her subsequent humiliation. Gouncourt----"

"But, dear one, finish about the yacht."

"Well, it seemed quite decided that Gertrude and I were to go to

Marseilles to meet the schooner; but the voyage from the Bay of Biscay

is a stormy and a tedious one; the weather was rough all the way, and

she took a long time to get to Gibraltar. She passed the strait

signalling to Lloyd's; we got a telegram; everything was ready; I had

ordered yachting clothes, shoes, and quantities of things; but after

that telegram no news came, and one evening Gertrude told me she was

beginning to feel anxious; the yacht ought to have arrived at

Marseilles. Three or four days passed, and then we read in the

paper--the _Evening Standard_, I think it was--the _Ring-Dove_,

a large schooner, had sunk off the coast while making for the Bay

of Plessy. Had she passed that point over yonder, no doubt she

would have been saved; all hands were lost, the captain, seven

men, and my book."

"Good heavens, how extraordinary! And what became of Gertrude? Were

you never her lover?"

"Never. We abstained while waiting for the yacht. Then she fell in

love with somebody else; she married her lover; and now he deplores

her; she found an excellent husband, and she died in his arms."

At every moment I expected Doris to ask me how it was that, for the

sake of writing a book, I had consented to go away for a six months'

cruise with a woman whom I didn't love. But there was a moment when I

loved her--the week before Lincoln. Whether Doris agreed tacitly that

my admiration of Gertrude's slender flanks and charm of manner and

taste in dress justified me in agreeing to go away with her, I don't

know; she did not trouble me with the embarrassing question I had

anticipated. Isn't it strange that people never ask the embarrassing

questions one foresees? She asked me instead with whom I had been in

love during the past five years, and this too embarrassed me, though

not to the extent the other question would have done. To say that

since I had seen Doris I had led a chaste life would be at once

incredible and ridiculous. Sighing a little, I spoke of a

_liaison_ that had lasted many years and had come to an end at

last. Fearing that Doris would ask if it had come to an end through

weariness, it seemed well to add that the lady had a daughter growing

up, and it was for the girl's sake we had agreed to bring our love

story to a close. We had, however, promised to remain friends.

Doris's silence embarrassed me a little, for she didn't ask any

questions about the lady and her daughter; and it was impossible to

tell from her manner whether she believed that this lady comprised the

whole of my love life for the last five years, and if she thought I

had really broken with her. For a moment or two I did not dare to look

at Doris, and then I felt that her disbelief mattered little, so long

as it did not enter as an influencing factor into the present

situation. Under a sky as blue and amid nature poetical as a

drop-curtain, one's moral nature dozes. No doubt that was it. There is

an English church at Plessy, but really! Dear little town, town of my

heart, where the local orchestra plays "The March of Aida" and "La

Belle Hélène"! If I could inoculate you, reader, with the sentiment of

the delicious pastoral you would understand why, all the time I was at

Plessy, I looked upon myself as a hero of legend, whether of the

Argonauts or the siege of Troy matters little. Returning from Mount

Ida after a long absence, after presenting in imagination the fairest

of women with the apple, I said:

"You asked me whom I had been in love with; now tell me with whom have

you been in love?"

"For the last three years I have been engaged to be married."

"And you are still engaged?"

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the blue sea, and I said laughing, that

it was not of a marriage or an engagement to be married that I spoke,

but of the beautiful, irrepressible caprice.

"You wouldn't have me believe that no passion has caught you and

dragged you about for the last five years, just as a cat drags a

little mouse about?"

"It is strange that you should ask me that, for that is exactly what

happened."

"Really?"

"Only that I suffered much more than any mouse ever suffered."

"Doris, tell me. You know how sympathetic I am; you know I shall

understand. All things human interest me. If you have loved as much as

you say, your story will ... I must hear it."

"Why should I tell it?" and her eyes filled with tears. "I suffered

horribly. Don't speak to me about it. What is the good of going over

it all again?"

"Yes, there is good; very much good comes of speaking, if this love

story is over, if there is no possibility of reviving it. Tell it, and

in telling, the bitterness will pass from you. Who was this man? How

did you meet him?"

"He was a friend of Albert's. Albert introduced him."

"Albert is the man you are engaged to? The old story, the very oldest.

Why should it always be the friend? There are so many other men, but

it is always the friend who attracts." And I told Doris the story of a

friend who had once robbed me, and my story had the effect of drying

her tears. But they began again as soon as she tried to tell her own

story. There could be no doubt that she had suffered. Things are

interesting in proportion to the amount of ourselves we put into them;

Doris had clearly put all her life into this story; a sordid one it

may seem to some, a story of deception and lies, for of course Albert

was deceived as cruelly as many another good man. But Doris must have

suffered deeply, for at the memory of her sufferings her face streamed

with tears. As I looked at her tears I said: "It is strange that she

should weep so, for her story differs nowise from the many stories

happening daily in the lives of men and women. She will tell me the

old and beautiful story of lovers forced asunder by cruel fate, and

this spot is no doubt a choice one to hear her story." And raising my

eyes I admired once again the drooping shore, the serrated line of

mountains sweeping round the bay. And the colour was so intense that

it overpowered the senses like a perfume, "like musk," I thought. When

I turned to Doris I could see she was wholly immersed in her own

sorrow, and it took all my art to persuade her to tell it, or it

seemed as if all my art of persuasion were necessary.

"As soon as you knew you loved him, you resolved to see him no more?"

Doris nodded.

"You sent him away before you yielded to him?"

She nodded, and looking at me her eyes filled with tears, but which

only seemed to make them still more beautiful, she told me that they

had both felt that it was impossible to deceive Albert.

* * * * *

All love stories are alike in this; they all contain what the

reviewers call "sordid details." But if Tristan had not taken

advantage of King Mark's absence on a hunting expedition, the world

would have been the poorer of a great love story; and what, after all,

does King Mark's happiness matter to us--a poor passing thing, whose

life was only useful in this, that it gave us an immortal love story?

And if Wagner had not loved Madame Wasendonck, and if Madame

Wasendonck had not been unfaithful to her husband, we should not have

had "Tristan." Who then would, for the sake of Wasendonck's honour,

destroy the score of "Tristan"? Nor is the story of "Tristan" the only

one, nor the most famous. There is also the story of Helen. If

Menelaus's wife had not been unfaithful to him, the world would have

been the poorer of the greatest of all poems, the "Iliad" and the

"Odyssey." Dear me, when one thinks of it, one must admit that art

owes a great deal to adultery. Children are born of the marriage,

stories of the adulterous bed, and the world needs both--stories as

well as children. Even my little tale would not exist if Doris had

been a prudent maiden, nor would it have interested me to listen to

her that day by the sea if she had naught to tell me but her

unswerving love for Albert. Her story is not what the world calls a

great story, and it would be absurd to pretend that if a shorthand

writer had taken it down his report would compare with the stories of

Isolde and Helen, but I heard it from her lips, and her tears and her

beauty replaced the language of Wagner and of Homer; and so well did

they do this that I am not sure that the emotion I experienced in

listening to her was less than that which I have experienced before a

work of art.

"Do you know," she began, "perhaps you don't, perhaps you've never

loved enough to know the anxiety one may feel for the absent. We had

been together all day once, and when we bade each other good-bye we

agreed that we should not see each other for two days, till Thursday;

but that night in bed an extraordinary desire took hold of me to know

what had become of him. I felt I must hear from him; one word would be

enough. But we had promised. It was stupid, it was madness, yet I had

to take down the telephone, and when I got into communication what do

you think the answer was?--'Thank God you telephoned! I've been

walking about the room nearly out of my mind, feeling that I should go

mad if the miracle did not happen.'"

"If you loved Ralph better than Albert----"

"Why didn't I give up Albert? Albert's life would have been broken and

ruined if I had done that. You see he has loved me so many years that

his life has become centred in me. He is not one of those men who like

many women. Outside of his work nothing exists but me. He doesn't care

much for reading, but he reads the books I like. I don't know that he

cares much about music for its own sake, but he likes to hear me sing

just because it is me. He never notices other women; I don't think

that he knows what they wear, but he likes my dresses, not because

they are in good taste, but because I wear them. One can't sacrifice a

man like that. What would one think of oneself? One would die of

remorse. So there was nothing to be done but for Ralph to go away. It

nearly killed me."

"I'm afraid I can give you no such love; my affection for you will

prove very tepid after such violent emotions."

"I don't want such emotions again; I could not bear them, they would

kill me; even a part would kill me. Two months after Ralph left I was

but a little shadow. I was thinner than I am now, I was worn to a

thread, I could hardly keep body and skirt together."

We laughed at Doris's little joke; and we watched it curling and going

out like a wreath of cigarette smoke.

"But did you get no happiness at all out of this great love?"

"We were happy only a very little while."

"How long?"

Doris reflected.

"We had about six weeks of what I should call real happiness, the time

while Albert was away. When he came back the misery and remorse began

again. I had to see him--not Albert, the other--every day; and Albert

began to notice that I was different. We used to go out together, we

three, and at last the sham became too great and Albert said he could

not stand it any longer. 'I prefer you should go out with him alone,

and if it be for your happiness I'll give you up.'"

"So you nearly died of love! Well, now you must live for love, liking

things as they go by. Life is beautiful at the moment, sad when we

look back, fearful when we look forward; but I suppose it's hopeless

to expect a little Christian like you to live without drawing

conclusions, liking things as they go by as the nymphs do. Dry those

tears; forget that man. You tell me it is over and done. Remember

nothing except that the sky and the sea are blue, that it is a luxury

to feel alive here by the sea-shore. My happiness would be to make you

happy, to see you put the past out of your mind, to close your eyes to

the future. That will be easy to do by this beautiful sea-shore, under

those blue skies with flowers everywhere and drives among the

mountains awaiting us. We create our own worlds. Chance has left you

here and sent me to you. I want you to eat a great deal and to sleep

and to get fatter and to dream and to read Theocritus, so that when we

go to the mountains we shall be transported into antiquity. You must

forget Albert and him who made you unhappy--he allowed you to look

back and forwards."

"I think I deserve some happiness; you see I have sacrificed so much."

At these words my hopes rose--shall I say like a balloon out of which

a great weight of ballast has been thrown?--and so high did they go

that failure seemed like a little feather swimming in the gulf below.

"She deserved some happiness," and intends to make me her happiness.

Her words could bear no other interpretation; she had spoken without

thought, and instinctively. Albert was away; why should she not take

this happiness which I offered her? Would she understand that distance

made a difference, that it was one thing to deceive Albert if he were

with her, and another when she was a thousand miles away? It was as if

we were in a foreign country; we were under palm trees, we were by the

Mediterranean. With Albert a thousand miles away it would be so easy

for her to love me. She had said there was no question of her marrying

any one but Albert--and to be unfaithful is not to be inconstant.

These were the arguments which I would use if I found that I had

misunderstood her; but for the moment I did not dare to inquire; it

would be too painful to hear I had misunderstood her; but at last,

feeling she might guess the cause of my silence, I said, not being

able to think of anything more plausible:

"You spoke, didn't you, of going for a drive?"

"We were speaking of happiness--but if you'd like to go for a drive.

There's no happiness like driving."

"Isn't there?"

She pinched my arm, and with a choking sensation in the throat I asked

her if I should send for a carriage.

"There will be time for a short drive before the sun setting. You said

you admired the hills--one day we will go to a hill town. There is a

beautiful one--Florac is the name of it--but we must start early in

the morning. To-day there will be only time to drive as far as the

point you have been admiring all the morning. The road winds through

the rocks, and you want to see the ilex trees."

"My dear, I want to see you."

"Well, you're looking at me. Come, don't be disagreeable."

"Disagreeable, Doris! I never felt more kindly in my life. I'm still

absorbed in the strange piece of luck which has brought us together,

and in such a well-chosen spot; no other would have pleased me as

much."

"Now why do you like the landscape? Tell me."

"I cannot think of the landscape now, Doris: I'm thinking of you, of

what you said just now."

"What did I say?"

"You said--I tried to remember the words at the time, but I have

forgotten them, so many thoughts have passed through my mind

since--you said--how did you word it?--after having suffered as much

as you did, some share of happiness----"

"No, I didn't say that; I said, having sacrificed so much, I thought I

deserved a little happiness."

"So she knew what she was saying," I said to myself. "Her words were

not casual," but not daring to ask her if she intended to make me her

happiness, I spoke about the landscape. "You ask me why I like the

landscape? Because it carries me back into past times when men

believed in nymphs and in satyrs. I have always thought it must be a

wonderful thing to believe in the dryad. Do you know that men

wandering in the woods sometimes used to catch sight of a white breast

between the leaves, and henceforth they could love no mortal woman?

The beautiful name of their malady was nympholepsy. A disease that

every one would like to catch."

"But if you were to catch it you wouldn't be able to love me, so I'll

not bring you to the mountains. Some peasant girl----"

"Fie! Doris, I have never liked peasant girls."

"Your antiquity is eighteenth-century antiquity. There are many

alcoves in it."

"I don't know that the alcove was an invention of the eighteenth

century. There were alcoves at all times. But, Doris, good heavens!

what are those trees? Never did I see anything so ghastly; they are

like ghosts. Not only have they no leaves, but they have no bark nor

any twigs; nothing but great white trunks and branches."

"I think they are called plantains."

"That won't do, you are only guessing; I must ask the coachman."

"I think, sir, they are called plantains."

"You only think. Stop and I'll ask those people."

"Sont des plantains, Monsieur."

"Well, I told you so," Doris said, laughing.

Beyond this spectral avenue, on either side of us there were fields,

and Doris murmured:

"See how flat the country is, to the very feet of the hills, and the

folk working in the fields are pleasant to watch."

I declared that I could not watch them, nor could you, reader, if you

had been sitting by Doris. I had risen and come away from long months

of toil; and I remember how I told Doris as we drove across those

fields towards the hills, that it was not her beauty alone that

interested me; her beauty would not be itself were it not illumed by

her wit and her love of art. What would she be, for instance, if she

were not a musician? Or would her face be the same face if it were

robbed of its mirth? But mirth is enchanting only when the source of

it is the intelligence. Vacuous laughter is the most tiresome of

things; a face of stone is more inveigling. But Doris prided herself

on her beauty more than on her wit, and she was disinclined to admit

the contention that beauty is dependent upon the intelligence. Our

talk rambled on, now in one direction, now in another.

Lovers are divided into two kinds, the babbling and the silent.

We meet specimens of the silent kind on a Thames back-water--the punt

drawn up under the shady bank with the twain lying side by side, their

arms about each other all the afternoon. When evening comes, and it is

time to return home, her fellow gets out the sculls, and they part

saying: "Well, dear, next Sunday, at the same time." "Yes, at the same

time next Sunday."

We were of the babbling kind, as the small part of our conversation

that appears in this story shows.

"My dear, my dear, remember that we are in an open carriage."

"What do those folks matter to us?"

"My dear, if I don't like it?"

To justify my desire of her lips I began to compare her beauty with

that of a Greek head on a vase, saying that hers was a cameo-like

beauty, as dainty as any Tanagra figure.

"And to see you and not to claim you, not to hold your face in my

hands just as one holds a vase, is----"

"Is what?"

"A kind of misery. What else shall I say? Fancy my disappointment if,

on digging among these mountains, I were to find a beautiful vase, and

some one were to say: 'You can look at it but not touch it.'"

"Do you love me as well as that?" she answered, somewhat moved, for my

words expressed a genuine emotion.

"I do indeed, Doris."

"We might get out here. I want you to see the view from the hilltop."

And, telling the driver that he need not follow us, to stay there and

rest his panting horse, we walked on. Whether Doris was thinking of

the view I know not; I only know that I thought only of kissing Doris.

To do so would be pleasant--in a way--even on this cold hillside, and

I noticed that the road bent round the shoulder of the mount. We soon

reached the hilltop, and we could see the road enter the village in

the dip between the hills, a double line of houses--not much

more--facing the sea, a village where we might go to have breakfast;

we might never go there; however that might be, we certainly should

remember that village and the road streaming out of it on the other

side towards the hills. Now and then we lost sight of the road; it

doubled round some rock or was hidden behind a group of trees; and

then we caught sight of it a little farther on, ascending the hills in

front of us, and no doubt on the other side it entered another

village, and so on around the coast of Italy. Even with the thought of

Doris's kisses in my mind, I could admire the road and the curves of

the bay. I felt in my pocket for a piece of paper and a pencil. The

colour was as beautiful as a Brabizon; there were many tints of blue,

no doubt, but the twilight had gathered the sea and sky into one tone,

or what seemed to be one tone.

"You wanted to see olive trees--those are olives."

"So those are olives! Do I at last look upon olives?"

"Are you disappointed?"

"Yes and no. The white gnarled trunk makes even the young trees seem

old. The olive is like an old man with skimpy legs. It seems to me a

pathetic tree. One does not like to say it is ugly; it is not ugly,

but it would be puzzling to say wherein lies its charm, for it throws

no shade, and is so grey--nothing is so grey as the olive. I like the

ilex better."

Where the road dipped there was a group of ilex trees, and it was in

their shade that I kissed Doris, and the beauty of the trees helps me

to appreciate the sentiment of those kisses. And I remember that road

and those ilex trees as I might remember a passage in Theocritus.

Doris--her very name suggests antiquity, and it was well that she was

kissed by me for the first time under ilex trees; true that I had

kissed her before, but that earlier love story has not found a

chronicler, and probably it never will. I like to think that the

beauty of the ilex is answerable, perhaps, for Doris's kisses--in a

measure. Her dainty grace, her Tanagra beauty, seemed to harmonise

with that of the ilex, for there is an antique beauty in this tree

that we find in none other. Theocritus must have composed many a poem

beneath it. It is the only tree that the ancient world could have

cared to notice; and if it were possible to carve statues of trees, I

am sure that the ilex is the tree sculptors would choose. The beech

and the birch, all the other trees, only began to be beautiful when

men invented painting. No other tree shapes itself out so beautifully

as the ilex, lifting itself up to the sky so abundantly and with such

dignity--a very queen in a velvet gown is the ilex tree; and we stood

looking at the group, admiring its glossy thickness, till suddenly the

ilex tree went out of my mind, and I thought of the lonely night that

awaited me.

"Doris, dear, it is more than flesh and blood can bear. My folly lay

in sending the telegram. Had I not sent it you wouldn't have known by

what train I was coming; you would have been fast asleep in your bed,

and I should have gone straight to your hotel."

"But, darling, you wouldn't compromise me. Every one would know that

we stayed at the same hotel."

"Dearest, it might happen by accident, and were it to happen by

accident what could you do?"

"All I can say is that it would be a most unfortunate accident."

"Then I have come a thousand miles for nothing. This is worse than the

time in London when I left you for your strictness. Can nothing be

done?"

"Am I not devoted to you? We have spent the whole day together. Now I

don't think it's at all nice of you to reproach me with having brought

you on a fool's errand."

"I didn't say that," and we quarrelled a little until we reached the

carriage. Doris was angry, and when she spoke again it was to say:

"If you are not satisfied, you can go back. I'm sorry. I think it's

most unreasonable that you should ask me to compromise myself."

"And I think it's unkind of you to suggest that I should go back, for

how can I go back?"

She did not ask me why--she was too angry at the moment--and it was

well she did not, for I should have been embarrassed to tell her that

I was fairly caught.

I had come a thousand miles to see her, and I could not say I was

going to take the _Côte d'azur_ back again, because she would not

let me stay at her hotel; to do so would be too childish, too futile.

The misery of the journey back would be unendurable. There was nothing

to do but to wait, and hope that life, which is always full of

accidents, would favour us. Better think no more about it. For it is

thinking that makes one miserable.

There were many little things which helped to pass the time away.

Doris went every evening to a certain shop to fetch two eggs that had

been laid that morning. It was necessary for her health that she

should eat eggs beaten up with milk between the first and second

breakfast. We went there, and it was amusing to pick my way through

the streets, carrying her eggs back to the hotel for her. She knew a

few people--strange folk, I thought them--elderly spinsters living

_en pension_ at different hotels. We dined with her friends, and

after dinner Doris sang, and when she had played many things that she

used to play to me in the old days, it was time for her to go to bed,

for she rarely slept after six o'clock, so she said.

"Good-night. Ah, no, the hour is ill," I murmured to myself as I

wended my lonely way, and I lay awake thinking if I had said anything

that would prejudice my chances of winning her, if I had omitted to

say anything that might have inclined her to yield. One lies awake at

night thinking of the mistakes one has made; thoughts clatter in one's

head. Good heavens! how stupid it was of me not to have used a certain

argument. Perhaps if I had spoken more tenderly, displayed a more

Christian spirit--all that paganism, that talk about nymphs and dryads

and satyrs and fauns frightened her. In the heat of the moment one

says more than one intends, though it is quite true that, as a rule,

it is well to insist that there is no such thing as our lower nature,

that everything about us is divine. So constituted are we that the

mind accepts the convention, and what we have to do is to keep to the

convention, just as in opera. Singing appears natural so long as the

characters do not speak. Once they speak they cannot go back to music;

the convention has been broken. As in Art so it is in Life. Tell a

woman that she is a nymph, and she must not expect any more from you

than she would from a faun, that all you know is the joy of the

sunlight, that you have no dreams beyond the worship of the perfect

circle of her breast, and the desire to gather grapes for her, and she

will give herself to you unconscious of sin. I must have fallen asleep

thinking of these things, and I must have slept soundly, for I

remembered nothing until the servant came in with my bath, and I saw

again the pretty sunlight flickering along the wall-paper. Before

parting the previous night, Doris and I had arranged that I was to

call an hour earlier than usual at the hotel; I was to be there at

half-past ten. She had promised to be ready. We were going to drive to

Florac, to one of the hill towns, and it would take two hours to get

there. We were going to breakfast there, and while I dressed, and in

the carriage going there, I cherished the hope that perhaps I might be

able to persuade Doris to breakfast in a private room, though feeling

all the while that it would be difficult to do so, for the public room

would be empty, and crowds of waiters would gather about us like

rooks, each trying to entice us towards his table.

The village of Florac is high up among the hills, built along certain

ledges of rock overlooking the valley, and going south in the train

one catches sight of many towns, like it built among mountain

declivities, hanging out like nests over the edge of precipices,

showing against a red background, crowning the rocky hill. No doubt

these mediaeval towns were built in these strange places because of

the security that summit gives against raiders. One can think of no

other reason, for it is hard to believe that in the fifteenth century

men were so captivated with the picturesque that for the sake of it

they would drag every necessary of life up these hills, several

hundred feet above the plain, probably by difficult paths--the

excellent road that wound along the edge of the hills, now to the

right, now to the left, looping itself round every sudden ascent like

a grey ribbon round a hat, did not exist when Florac was built. On the

left the ground shelves away into the valley, down towards the sea,

and olives were growing down all these hillsides. Above us were olive

trees, with here and there an orange orchard, and the golden fruit

shining among the dark leaves continued to interest me. Every now and

again some sudden aspect interrupted our conversation; the bay as it

swept round the carved mountains, looking in the distance more than

ever like an old Italian picture of a time before painters began to

think about values and truth of effect, when the minds of men were

concerned with beauty; as mine was, for every time I looked at Doris

it occurred to me that I had never seen anything prettier, and not

only her face but her talk still continued to enchant me. She was

always so eager to tell me things, that she must interrupt, and these

interruptions were pleasant. I identified them with her, and so

closely that I can remember how our talk began when we got out of the

suburbs. By the last villa there was a eucalyptus tree growing; the

sun was shining, and Doris had asked me to hold her parasol for her;

but the road zigzagged so constantly that I never shifted the parasol

in time, and a ray would catch her just in the face, adding perhaps to

the freckles--there were just a few down that little nose which was

always pleasant to look upon. I was saying that I still remember our

talk as we passed that eucalyptus tree. Doris had begun one of those

little confessions which are so interesting, and which one hears only

from a woman one is making love to, which probably would not interest

us were we to hear them from any one else. It delighted me to hear

Doris say: "This is the first time I have ever lived alone, that I

have ever been free from questions. It was a pleasure to remember

suddenly as I was dressing that no one would ask me where I was going,

that I was just like a bird by myself, free to spring off the branch

and to fly. At home there are always people round one; somebody is in

the dining-room, somebody is in the drawing-room; and if one goes down

the passage with one's hat on there is always somebody to ask where

one is going, and if you say you don't know they say, 'Are you going

to the right or to the left, because if you are going to the left I

should like you to stop at the apothecary's and to ask----?'" How I

agreed with her! Family life I said degrades the individual, and is

only less harmful than socialism, because one can escape from it....

"But, Doris, you're not ill! You are looking better."

"I weighed this morning, and I have gone up two pounds. You see I am

amused, and a woman's health is mainly a question whether she is

amused, whether somebody is making love to her."

"Making love! Doris, dear, there is no chance of making love to

anybody here. That is the only fault I find with the place; the sea,

the bay, the hill towns, everything I see is perfect in every detail,

only the essential is lacking. I was thinking, Doris, that for the

sake of your health we might go and spend a few days at Florac."

"My dear, it would be impossible. Everybody would know that I had been

there."

"Maybe, but I don't agree. However, I am glad that you have gone up

two pounds.... I am sure that what you need is mountain air. The

seaside is no good at all for nerves. I have a friend in Paris who

suffers from nerves and has to go every year to Switzerland to climb

the Matterhorn."

"The Matterhorn!"

"Well, the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc; he has to climb mountains,

glaciers, something of that kind. I remember last year I wrote to him

saying that I did not understand the three past tenses in French, and

would he explain why--something, I have forgotten what--and he

answered: 'Avec mes pieds sur des glaciers je ne puis m'arrêter pour

vous expliquer les trois passés.'"

Doris laughed and was interested, for I had introduced her some years

ago to the man who had written this letter; and then we discussed the

_fussent_ and the _eussent, été_, and when our language of

the French Grammar was exhausted we returned to the point whence we

had come, whether it was possible to persuade Doris to pass three days

in the hotel at Florac--in the interests of her health, of course.

"I'm not sure at all that mountain air would not do me good. Plessy

lies very low and is very relaxing."

"Very."

But though I convinced her that it would have been better if she had

gone at once to stop at Florac, I could do nothing to persuade her to

pass three days with me in the inn there. As we drove up through the

town the only hope that remained in my mind was that I might induce

her to take breakfast in a private room. But the _salle du

restaurant_ was fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, it contained a

hundred tables, maybe more, the floor was polished oak, and the

ceilings were painted and gilded, and there were fifty waiters waiting

for the swallows that would soon arrive from the north; we were the

van birds.

"Shall we breakfast in a private room?" I whispered humbly.

"Good heavens! no! I wouldn't dare to go into a private room before

all these waiters."

My heart sank again, and when Doris said, "Where shall we sit?" I

answered, "Anywhere, anywhere, it doesn't matter."

It had taken two hours for the horses to crawl up to the mountain

town, and as I had no early breakfast I was ravenously hungry. A box

of sardines and a plate of butter, and the prospect of an omelette and

a steak, put all thoughts of Doris for the moment out of my head, and

that was a good thing. We babbled on, and it was impossible to say

which was the more interested, which enjoyed talking most; and the

pleasure which each took in talking and hearing the other talk became

noticeable.